The reception history of Palaephatus 1 (On the Centaurs) in Ancient and Byzantine texts* MINERVA ALGANZA ROLDÁN Universidad de Granada [email protected] JULIAN BARR [email protected] GRETA HAWES Australian National University [email protected] * This article is part of the Research Project ‘Estudios sobre transmisión y recepción de Paléfato y la exégesis racionalista de los mitos / Studies on the transmission and reception of Palaephatus, and the rationalist exegesis of myths’ (FFI2014-52203-P), supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) of Spain. The sections on ancient texts (2, 3, and 4) are primarily the work of Julian Barr and Greta Hawes. The sections on Byzantine texts (5, 6, and 7) are primarily the work of Minerva Alganza Roldán, and were translated into English by Greta Hawes. Polymnia - n°3 - 2017 THE RECEPTION HISTORY OF PALAEPHATUS 1 (ON THE CENTAURS) 187 1. Introduction The transmission history of Palaephatus’ Peri Apiston remains a topic of dispute. The text that we have comprises a methodological introduction along with 46 examples of the rationalisation of individual myths.1 The best evidence that we have points to Palaephatus as working in Athens in the late fourth century BC, within the ambit of the Peripatetics. But almost nothing can be said with certainty about the early history of his Peri Apiston.2 Palaephatus’ name – in the context of a far-fetched explanation utilising a protos heuretes motif – appears in a fragment of new comedy (Athenion fr.1 PCG).3 His Troica is mentioned – approvingly – by Strabo (12.3.22) as a source used by Demetrius of Scepsis (early second century BC).4 But only in the late first century AD, in a passage in the Progymnasmata of Aelius Theon (discussed below), is Palaephatus named as author of the Peri Apiston. When Festa published the text in 1902, he used a double critical apparatus to reflect both the complicated textual transmission of Palaephatus’ work, and his hypothesis that the manuscripts preserved an eleventh-century compendium of the five-book original. Our extant text, in his view, preserved genuine Palaephatean passages alongside other material corrupted by its use in rhetorical instruction. Although Festa’s text has not been subject to revision since, his ideas regarding the state of the text have received some critical re-evaluation. Wipprecht (1892) and Schraeder (1894) argued against Festa’s hypothesis that this was a later composite compilation, and more recently translators have insisted that the form and content of the prologue and longer entries are original.5 Further, while Festa and his predecessors focussed on identifying the author and establishing the authenticity of the work, recent studies have shifted the focus to examining its exegetical features, its philosophical context, and its relationship to rhetoric.6 1 Five further – non rationalistic – entries found in some manuscripts are certainly interpolations and should not be included in discussions of Palaephatus and the Palaephatean tradition. 2 For recent discussions of the ancient reception of the Peri Apiston, see Santoni 2000: 10; Santoni 2002: 146–47; Alganza Roldán 2012: 40–46; Hawes 2014a: 229–233. 3 Athenion cannot be dated, not least because only this one fragment of his work survives. In PCG he is assigned tentatively to the first century BC. 4 For discussion of the content of Palaephatus’ Troica and its relationship to other accounts of the Troad from antiquity, see Trachsel 2007. 5 E.g. Roquet 1974, Stern 1996, and Santoni 2000. 6 See e.g. Santoni 2002; Hawes 2014a. There is a useful synopsis in Zucker 2016: 43–46. 188 MINERVA ALGANZA ROLDAN – JULIAN BARR – GRETA HAWES In this article, we look in detail at the reception history of Palaephatus’ treatment of the Centaurs in the first entry of the Peri Apiston.7 We trace its influence through textual passages from antiquity, late antiquity, and the Byzantine period. This is of course merely one illustration of the reception history of the text amongst many possible ones, but it does have predictive value as a paradigm for the later fortunes of the text. Palaephatus’ rationalisation of the Centaurs is one of the most recognisable aspects of his text; it thus has a rich reception tradition, and a distinctive status as a prominent archetype of Palaephatus’ interpretative project. The reception history of a passage of text offers much beyond information about the transmission of that text. In some instances we are indeed able to comment on whether a particular author might have had direct access to Palaephatus’ text, or whether the material came to him by way of an intermediary source. But, even where such issues are not clear, we can explore how ideas which derive ultimately from Palaephatus developed by considering how each author made use of ‘Palaephatean’ material and how each functioned within each new context. In broadening the scope of the study of the ‘afterlife’ of the Peri Apiston in this way, we are taking up the challenge articulated by David Bouvier: la question est plutôt de savoir comment les notices du PA ont été regroupées, pourquoi elles ont été placées sous un nom particulier, comment elles ont été élaborées, dans quel contexte. Postuler que ces notices relèvent d’un auteur particulier revient à discréditer d’emblée l’intérêt d’un manuel qui révèle autre chose qu’une pensée et une position intellectuelle individuelle. Mais le XXe siècle n’était pas prêt à reconnaître ce point.8 Indeed, the twenty-first century, with its more sophisticated understanding of the pervasive influences and amorphous forms taken by mythographic knowledge through time, requires a new perspective on the Palaephatean tradition. In distancing ourselves from the focus on recovering the Palaephatean original (an impossibility, in any case, according to Festa), we emphasise the desirability of understanding Palaephatus’ value as a 7 Of the manuscripts studied by Vitelli 1893, all have the entry on the Centaurs as their first entry except those he identifies as ‘group E’. To the eight manuscripts classified in this group by the Italian scholar, two new ones must now be added: EBE 799 (fourteenth century) and ȧɍɋɛ ȤȾɛɏɘɋ 1317 (mid-eighteenth century), which begin with the entries on Actaeon and Pasiphae respectively. 8 Bouvier 2015: 39. THE RECEPTION HISTORY OF PALAEPHATUS 1 (ON THE CENTAURS) 189 product of mythographic activity developed through generations of writers, readers, and thinkers. 2. On the Centaurs: Palaephatus’ rationalisation For the text and translation of Palaephatus 1, see Appendix. Palaephatus’ entry on the Centaurs is notable for its length and detail. It deploys the full ‘Palaephatean structure’, a pattern of narration, refutation, correction, and resolution characteristic of this treatise.9 The entry begins by narrating the most pertinent ‘fact’ of the Centaurs, namely their hybrid form. Its refutation of them focuses on this aspect, too: such a creature could not eat food that would satisfy both its human and its equine stomachs, and whatever does not exist in the present did not exist in the past either. These arguments from biological possibility and historical consistency are among the most prominent in the treatise. They are paradigms for its ‘scientific’ rationale for why myths should not be believed.10 Against the language of ‘belief’ (ɎɂɜɅɂɒȽɇ) and ‘impossibility’ (ਕɁɠɋȽɒɍɋ), Palaephatus then offers the surety of ‘truth’ (ɒઁ Ɂ੻ ਕɉɄɅɚɑ). His rationalisation corrects the conventional myth narrative, and resolves it by explaining its origins in misunderstandings of rather more banal events. Palaephatus’ rationalisation takes the form of a long narrative account: Thessaly is suffering an incursion of wild bulls from Pelion so King Ixion promises a reward for their defeat. Youths from the foothills win this by inventing horse-riding and killing the bulls with their javelins. After their victory, however, these young men become arrogant and take to harassing Ixion and ravaging the countryside, even abducting Lapith women. Whereas Palaephatus had reduced the myth of the Centaurs to the simple fact of their hybridity in his introduction, his historicised narrative resolves four mythic ‘problems’ in turn: apart from their hybridity, he addresses also their birth, the meaning of their name, and their battle with the Lapiths. The Centaurs are ‘of Ixion and out of a cloud / Nephele’ not because they were born from such a coupling, but because they were employed by the former, and hail from a town called Nephele (the ambivalence of the 9 For details of the Palaephatean structure and its functions, see Delattre 2013: 70–73; Hawes 2014a: 48–52, 71–72; Hawes 2014b. 10 Although such arguments underpin the assumptions of the Peri Apiston, they are very seldom stated explicitly in the entries. Arguments regarding biological possibility appear in entries 2 (the Minotaur), 4 (Sphinx), 24 (Geryon), and 28 (Chimaera); arguments for the historical continuity of species appear also in the Preface, and in entries 28 (Pegasus) and 32 (the Amazons). 190 MINERVA ALGANZA ROLDAN – JULIAN BARR – GRETA HAWES preposition in the phrase ਥɈ ȨɂɔɚɉɄɑ cannot be adequately rendered in English). Their name is traced to their skill in using javelins to ‘pierce bulls’ (ɒɍઃɑ ɒȽɠɏɍɓɑ ɈȽɒɂɈɂɋɒəɋɋɓɐȽɋ). Their battle with the Lapiths is the result of a situation of mounting hostility. Finally, we get an explanation for their hybridity: this is a visual illusion since a rider at a distance might indeed seem to an unsophisticated bystander to be fused to his mount. These rationalisations show typical features of Palaephatus’ approach. The final explanation makes use of the ‘misunderstood sight’ motif; the first two, by contrast, rely on misunderstandings of ambiguous language. As so often, Palaephatus ends by reporting a first-person description of the ‘actual’ event which forms the basis for a mythical re-imagining of the situation.